…Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.(Revelation 9:14-15)

The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.(Isaiah 17:1-2)

There are four nations touching or bordered by the Euphrates River. The Book of the Revelation tells us that there have long been “Four Angels” bound at the River, prepared for a specific “hour, and a day, and a month, and a year…to slay a third part of men”.

We are looking at the rapid changes occurring in those nations over the last thirty years, in view of Bible Prophecy.

God uses Angels, even evil Angels . Fallen Angels are referred to in scripture variously as demons, territorial spirits, Principalities, Powers, World Rulers of Darkness, and Princes. Daniel had a vision in which a righteous Angel explained a long delay to a serious prayer he had prayed in Daniel 10,

Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia…Then said he, Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? and now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come.(Daniel 10:12-13, and 20)

Fallen Angels resisted the answers to Daniels Prayer, which he offered in Persia. The “Prince of Persia”, the fallen power which spiritually ruled the pagan nation of Persia, was able to resist the angel Gabriel who was dispatched to bring message of the answer to Daniel’s prayer. We then learn that the Prince of Persia would soon be replaced by the Prince of Grecia.

International events fulfilled this vision, for Persia would subsequently be defeated by the Greek Empire, as the Gentile custodian of captive Israel.

Could the “four Angels” bound at Euphrates be connected in the same way to the four nations connected to the Euphrates?

We have looked at the rapid sea changes which have occurred in Turkey over the last 100 years but especially in the past twenty years.

Syria, the second country on the path of the Euphrates has been undergoing some agonizing changes as well, which are definitely of prophetic significance.

Syria’s modern history in a nutshell; She was under the Ottoman Empire, until the end of World War 1 when the Empire collapsed. For a brief period of time she was known as the Arab Kingdom of Syria, then came under the French Mandate. Syria gained independence in 1946 from the French in the post Word War 2 colonial retreat.

Syria underwent a series of Governments, but engaged in several Arab/Israeli Wars, and in 1964 came under the rule of the Ba’ath party, (a pan Arabist fascist political party), one month after the Ba’athists executed a successful coup in Iraq. In 1970, Syria came under the rule of Hafez Assad, the Ba’athist secretary of defense and a member of a small Shiite sect called the Alawites.

Syria participated in the 1967 six day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur surprise attack on Israel. She intervened in the Lebanese civil War, invading the formerly Christian nation, and waging a 15 year occupation of Lebanon and a proxy war through Hezbullah against Israel from southern Lebanon.

In 1982, The Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni terror organization led an armed uprising against Syria, primary focussed from the city of Hama. Hafez Assad sent in the Syrian military who shelled Muslim Brotherhood areas of the modern city, leaving thousands dead and the city in piles of rubble.

Bashir Assad, Hafez’s son, succeeded him in the year 2000. In 2011 the winds of the “Arab Spring” reached Syria, when demonstrators were violently crushed, and a sectarian civil war broke out between Sunni forces, and Shiite and Alawites. The Sunni forces are backed by the Saudi’s, the US and other western governments. This Arab and Western support actually led to the creation of the rogue ISIS.

Another factor complicating this is the incursion of Kurdish forces, who take sides against Assad also. The Kurds are the Biblical Medes, and are currently the largest people group (30 million) denied a State. There is an enclave of them carved out of northern Iraq, for the Kurds were the most pro western factor in the gulf wars. But all of their ‘neighbors’ hate and fear the Kirds and vehemently would deny them a state.

More on the Kurds later, for they play a significant rille in prophecy.

Assad and his Shiite allies are backed by Iran and by Russia. Turkey has both supported and at times suppressed ISIS, in this war.

As a consequence of this war, half of Syria’s population (22 million) has gone into exile, streaming into Jordan,Lebanon, Turkey and further up into Europe, destabilizing France, Germany, Belgium, Greece and Italy.

More than half a million have died, as Iranian and Russian forces simply pound Sunni areas to rubble, in many cases with no military or strategic objective, other than to weaponize millions of homeless Sunnis who are being driven out of the land, to destabilize the West, ( A win win in Russian eyes).

Israel has had to send sorties into Syria several times over the years in order to destroy Nuclear facilities, such as the raid conducted on September 6, 2007 in the Deir ez-Zor region. No nation claimed responsibility for the raid, but when Syria blamed Israel they declared that the indicated site was a nuclear facility with a military purpose.

What a cauldron of horror is brewing in Syria! Several geopolitical rifts are involved; Sunni/Shia, Russia/America, West versus East, everybody versus the Kurds, and of course the World versus Israel are all converging in this nation through which the Euphrates river runs.

Ironically the claim to fame of the Ancient city of Damascus is that she is “the oldest continually inhabited city in all of the world”. But “Damascus shall be a heap of Rubble,and shall no more be a city!” according to Isaiah!

Zechariah and Jeremiah also concur,

The burden of the word of the Lord in the land of Hadrach, and Damascus shall be the rest thereof: when the eyes of man, as of all the tribes of Israel, shall be toward the Lord.(Zechariah 9:1)

Damascus is waxed feeble, and turneth herself to flee, and fear hath seized on her: anguish and sorrows have taken her, as a woman in travail. How is the city of praise not left, the city of my joy! Therefore her young men shall fall in her streets, and all the men of war shall be cut off in that day, saith the LORD of hosts. And I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and it shall consume the palaces of Benhadad.(Jeremiah 49:23-27)

Hamath and Arpad, are modern Syrian cities, Hamah being the aforementioned Hama, the fifth largest city in Syria. Arpad is called Tel-Rafat and is 20 miles north of Alleppo.

The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.(Isaiah 17:2)

There are videos made recently by unmanned Russian drones, over Syrian cities which show block after block of shattered cities, mere piles of Rubble, with collapsed floors of buildings pancaked one atop another, and no sign of life anywhere.

Something so terrible is going to come out of this apocalyptic war in Syria, it will eventually engulf the whole world in a holocaust.

Perhaps then Men will look to their Maker…

At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel. And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall respect that which his fingers have made, either the groves, or the images.(Isaiah 17:7-8)

The burden of the word of the Lord in the land of Hadrach, and Damascus shall be the rest thereof: when the eyes of man, as of all the tribes of Israel, shall be toward the Lord.( Zechariah 9:1)

To purchase Pastor Bill Randle’s book, “A Sword on the Land: The Muslim World in Bible Prophecy”, please visit: http://www.aswordontheland.com/buy/